Top savings account launches today 3 July 2009 at 9:49AM in Savings & Investments 17 replies 2.5K views

Former_MSE_Guy

This is the discussion thread for the following MSE News Story:

Top savings account launches today

funkymonkey

applied for mine today! really easy, got an email saying they would let me know within 5 days and another email one minute later saying id got it. I bank with A&L so it will be better than using my savings account they give you when you open up a current account as it only pays 0.10 %

alanwsg

Same here.
FWIW, The last time this happened, once I had the account number I had to phone A&L to get the old account transferred into the new one: you can't do it on-line without going via your current account (I'll be moving from an online-saver 4).
They were happy to do it straight away.

G_M

MSE guy - can I suggest editing the thread title to include the account name?

Also it's not really the 'top account'. cf Coventry 50+ (3.25), Lloyds Vantage (4%)

LongTermLurker

Is that good? To me, it looks like a bad deal, especially if you have more than £25k to deposit, because you get the same rate regardless of how much you deposit until next August and it only gets better after that.

I must admit, for me, the rates are so low at the moment that it's not worth moving money about - after all, 0.25% of next-to-nothing isn't going to make much difference. While I happily chased the high rates last year it's not something I'm doing at the moment.

joegib

Also, the A & L Online Saver 5 account is annual interest only, so unlike their past online saver accounts, there's no option for monthly interest.

Biggles

G_M wrote: »

MSE guy - can I suggest editing the thread title to include the account name?

Yes, this seems to be a recurring problem with these posts.

No mention in the thread title of what account it is.

In case it's one you don't already know about, you click on the thread, to find there's no mention of the account name in the first post either (which should be the informative one).

Instead, you have to go to the trouble of clicking on the link to read the title of the article.

Multiply all this by the number of people who see the thread and you can surely see what a waste of time it is. I've seen this pointed out before, but obviously to no effect.

antispam246

Issue 6 will be next week. 3.16% I hear.

treecity

Is there a logical reason why they don't just up the interest rate on existing accounts rather than bringing out one issue after another?

I have about 4 A+L accounts, now all are empty except one with £1 in it. I am very slightly fed up with having to open a new account every couple of months to keep up with the new issue accounts from all the banks and building societies...

LongTermLurker

treecity wrote: »

Is there a logical reason why they don't just up the interest rate on existing accounts rather than bringing out one issue after another?

I have about 4 A+L accounts, now all are empty except one with £1 in it. I am very slightly fed up with having to open a new account every couple of months to keep up with the new issue accounts from all the banks and building societies...

Deja vu or what? Remember Bradford & Bingley? :rolleyes:

masonic

treecity wrote: »

Is there a logical reason why they don't just up the interest rate on existing accounts rather than bringing out one issue after another?

The reason is that they can pay out a higher rate if it is only paid to a fraction of their customers. If they increased the rate for everyone, the increase would be a lot smaller.